Big purchases on the farm or at home make for big decisions

View full sizeWe are patiently waiting for our shiny new planter to be delivered!

Have you looked at buying a new home recently? Prices vary quite a bit based on how many bedrooms, what year the home is, and what kind of shape it is in, right? The same holds true for when farmers look to buy equipment.

For instance, we are looking at buying a new corn planter for next year’s spring planting season. The price of the brand new corn planter we are thinking about purchasing is $112,000, and that doesn’t count purchasing the seed to go in the ground! The options for corn planters are probably about as diverse as what you find in looking at a home. Farmers decide on how many rows they want in their corn planter, i.e. how many rows of corn do they want to plant at one time.

View full sizeAndrea Boughton, Farm Fresh FoodOur old planter needed to be replaced

So, as you consider the number of bedrooms, farmers are thinking about how much ground they can cover with one machine. The farmer also judges the size of tractor they currently use and how much horsepower it has.. This is something important to keep in mind, because not all tractors can pull all sizes of equipment. Lastly, just like when you consider the age and shape of a house, we contemplate the age and condition of the equipment.

View full sizeAndrea Boughton, Farm Fresh FoodOut with the old and in with the new, next Spring it will be our new planter in the fields in place of our old one.

Once the corn planter and seed is purchased, farmers are ready to go. However, a corn planter is only one piece of the pie for a farmer. Unlike once you have a house and furniture, you are good to go, a farmer still needs many other pieces of equipment to complete the job. On our farm, we need equipment to prepare the fields for planting – disc and plow; equipment to harvest the corn – a combine; and equipment to mow, rake, and bale the hay for the cows – haybine, rake, and baler. All of this equipment does not necessarily cost as much as the new corn planter. The prices vary for each type of equipment. . For example, a combine will cost more than a hay rake. Purchasing a house is taxing enough. Can you imagine purchasing all these different kinds of equipment? It would be like purchasing at least one house, a car, a trailer, and the supplies to stock each. While it wasn’t an easy decision, we need to continue to grow corn to feed our cows, so we made our purchase, a shiny new Kinze 12-row corn planter.